In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

Of course. Father-daughter time, that mysterious thing.

When I was younger, I would’ve given anything to have a conversation with him, have him take interest in me. But by now, through all our ups and downs, it just felt wrong, like an imposter living inside my dad’s skin.

The words cleaved me in half. Mrs. Rush, my favorite teacher—the one I felt surely saw me, recognized I was special—couldn’t remember I existed.

Your body has a knowing. Like an antenna, attuned to tremors in the air, or a dowsing rod, tracing things so deeply buried you have no language for them yet.

You are formally invited

The moment I pulled it out, my hands began to tremble

I like your dreams better than mine.”

That was the way life worked, a lesson he’d taught me himself: Wanting is dangerous. The less you want, the safer you’ll be

The room chilled. The words were harsh, but maybe the harshest part was that they came from Caro. I remembered something I’d said to her once when I was annoyed—maybe sophomore year, maybe junior: Caro, toughen up or the world is going to chew you.
Well, she’d toughened. After we’d broken her.

Everything I thought I knew gone in the blink of an eye, our past scratched out and written over with the truth, the words dark and terrible. And I was going straight to hell, because the first thought that crossed my mind when Mint unraveled was, I won.
Ten years ago, on Valentine’s Day, Mint had stormed out of Sweetheart, snuck into my room, and stabbed Heather seventeen times because he thought she was me. Heather was always taking what was mine, and the secret of her murder—the great, intractable mystery of her death—was that she’d simply done it one too many times.
It had been about me this whole time.